Costly Problems Are Plaguing Today’s Recruitment Experts – New Research from HR.com

Most of today’s organizations are having a hard time filling open job positions quickly and at a reasonable cost, according to a new report released by HR.com. More than two-thirds (68%) of surveyed HR professionals said finding candidates with the right skills was among the most difficult hiring challenges, and, on average, they would not rehire 31% of their recent hires if given the chance to do it again. To address these costly challenges, HR professionals have high hopes for new technologies that will help disrupt the traditional talent acquisition (TA) function.

“Our findings indicate that the challenges facing the talent acquisition function are both broad and deep,” said Debbie McGrath, Chief Instigator and CEO of HR.com. “They’re broad in that they cover a range of issues, such as quality of hire, cost of hire, time-to-fill and regrettable hires. They’re deep in that each one of these challenges comes with its own set of specific issues that require careful attention to detail.”

Quality of hire isn’t the only issue. In fact, organizations are even less confident in their ability to fill jobs quickly enough. Only 25% of respondents rated their talent acquisition function as good or excellent at the time-to-fill a position, and just 37% are good or excellent in the area of cost of hire.

In other words, many organizations are spending too much time and money to hire employees that often turn out to be regrettable. It’s no wonder, then, that HR professionals seem interested in new paradigms, techniques and technologies that could disrupt and dramatically improve the TA function.

The HR study specifically asked participants about what outcomes they would like to achieve through the use artificial intelligence (AI) for talent acquisition and selection. Fifty-seven percent cited the ability to fill open positions more quickly, while 51% want to spend less time sifting through resumes. But they’re not willing to trade quality for speed – 54% want AI to help them improve the match between candidates and jobs.

In short, study respondents are hopeful that AI can simultaneously improve the speed, quality and the overall productivity of the TA process.